THE EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY

Khwaja Ahmed Abbas

For two decades, Khwaja Ahmed Abbas had been one of a group of progressive (read Left-leaning) intellectuals that Raj Kapoor had gathered around him. But by the time Bobby had happened, that world was on the verge of disintegration. Mera Naam Joker had pulled the plug on the showman’s belief in himself and Bobby was written as an exercise in desperation and cynicism. And yet it saved the RK banner and launched two stars. Abbas later wrote a novelization; here’s a chapter incorporating the famous, ‘Main shaayar toh nahin song sequence’. You can see why novelizations rarely work.

Raja’s father and mother had thrown a gala party in celebration of their son’s eighteenth birthday.

But while the glittering crowd of guests was imbibing liquor and enjoying, it was only after some time that somebody noticed the absence of the young man whose birthday was being celebrated.

‘Where is Raja?’

‘Where is your son?’

The girls in the party, specially the models of Raja’s father’s advertising agency, were all clamouring for the young man.

‘He is very shy,’ explained Raja’s mother. ‘That’s what comes of spending so many years in a boarding school where there is no co-education. Neema!’ She addressed her friend, a dancer who ran a school of dancing, and who was somewhat younger than her but much older than Raja. ‘Will you be a darling and bring Raja from his room?’

Neema, who was a sultry beauty, very daringly dressed in a sari which was much below the navel and a backless choli that hardly covered her voluptuous breasts, went upto Raja’s room and knocked on the door.

‘Come in!’ came Raja’s voice.

But when she entered. he was not looking at her or even in her direction. Climbing on a stepladder, he was looking at the wall where he was putting up the picture of his ‘dream girl in white’—

Looking about the room, she noticed the poetry notebook lying on a table behind him.

‘I beg your pardon!’ he said, ‘How did you come here?’

‘You are Raja, aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘I am Neema!’

He joined his hands to say, ‘Namastey!’

She added, ‘I am a friend of your mother’s!’

‘My mother is downstairs in the hall. Please go there, I want to dress for the party. I am already late!’

‘Don’t get panicky. Your mother sent me to bring you down to the party. I am going, but I’ll be seeing you soon, I hope.’

As she closed the door, he realized that she had walked out with his poetry notebook.

At last when Raja came down the staircase, one of the girls shouted: ‘There comes the bridegroom.’

Raja blushed and looked flustered as he was surrounded and hailed, as his hand was shaken, as he was patted and petted and kissed—yes, the same Neema now kissed him right there in public, before the eyes of his father and mother—for, after all, she was the friend of his mother!

The model girls of his father’s advertising company made the maximum fuss about him—

Dragging him to the dance floor to dance with them, despite his protests that he didn’t know dancing—singing birthday greetings— ‘For he is a jolly good fellow’—inviting him to blow out the eighteen candles on the birthday cake—and in the process, taking little liberties with him—hoping to find favour with him, for, after all, he was their Boss’s son—soon he would be the Boss!

Bewildered in this mad medley, Raja looked around the room, and saw in this crowd of technicolour beauties and black-clad penguin-like men a plainly dressed but very attractive girl in a white frock. She was unadorned but somehow she immediately fascinated him. Was she his dream girl in white? He couldn’t find out for she was far away, humbly standing in a corner, and there were dozens of guests in between, who wouldn’t let him pass without making a fuss about him. And, meanwhile, Neema—that young friend of his mother’s—had made a dramatic announcement which completely unnerved Raja.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, You know our Raja—the darling boy— has not only completed the Senior Cambridge course and is expected to pass with distinction—but he has also blossomed forth as a poet—’

Applause greeted the remark, while Raja flushed scarlet, and got hot under the collar.

‘I now request him on behalf of all of you present to sing or to recite his most beautiful little poem: ‘My Dream Girl In White’.

Again there was applause, cheers, ‘Come on Raja’, ‘Shabash’, and ‘Come on, Raja!’.

His father encouraged him: ‘Nothing to be ashamed of, my boy. At your age even I considered myself a bit of a poet—If you don’t believe me, ask your mother.’

Laughter greeted the remark, and his mother said: ‘Raja, now prove that you are not as bad a poet as your father was!’

Again there was a burst of laughter.

One of the pretty models sighed soulfully: ‘Ah, what a title! My Dream Girl In White!’

And a more daring one, who was also a more tipsy one, said, looking at Raja with come-hither eyes: ‘Don’t tell me, my dear, that you have just met me and already you have composed a song addressed to me?’

‘It is not meant for you!’ retorted Raja with anger, looking in the direction of the unknown young girl in white standing in a corner.

‘Read it, recite it, or sing it—and we will know who is your inspiration! Is it someone you met while in school?’

‘There is no such girl,’ shouted Raja, and then added in an undertone ‘—Yet!’

At last he was persuaded to sing his poem ‘My Dream Girl in White’, while Neema accompanied him on the piano. Looking not at any particular girl, but beyond them, to the unknown one in the corner, or to someone in the future, he recited:

I have not met her—

But I have seen her—

She comes to me secretly every night

My dream girl in white!

She is dressed not in brocade or silk

No diamonds glitter on her fingers

She has a rose for her raven hair

And simple jasmines are her delight—

My dream girl in white! …

There was a tremendous applause, specially from the girls present, many of whom imagined that it was addressed to them.

But as Raja’s eyes swept across the applauding crowd—lingering over the faces of the girls—he did not find what he was seeking. The unknown girl in white had disappeared, and there was disappointment writ large on his face. Was it an apparition, just one of his dreams?

And now everyone was gone—

Only Father,

Mother,

Raja,

and the birthday presents displayed on a long table.

‘Cigarette, darling?’ The father offered one to his wife and she accepted one as well as the light.

‘Cigarette, Raja?’

He offered one to his son who was quite shocked.

‘Thank you, Sir, I don’t smoke.’

‘Come on, Son, I believe everyone smokes in school—I would rather like you smoked in front of me than smoked surreptitiously in the bathroom.’

Raja replied between clenched teeth. ‘I don’t smoke—not even in the bathroom!’

‘Leave the boy alone,’ admonished the mother, ‘Let’s look at all the lovely presents that our friends have given to Raja—’

Their—and Raja’s—glances swept the collection of fountain pens, electric shavers, cuff links, ties, scarves—and eventually came to a stop on an incongruous little sponge cake.

‘Who brought this cake?’ Raja asked, happily surprised: ‘It’s just kind I like since childhood. Who could have remembered that?’

His mother dismissed it with a contemptuous: ‘Oh, that cake! It was brought by your old governess—Remember the old ‘Auntie’ who used to look after you when you were a child?’ He went to have a closer look at the cake, picked it up and smelt it.

‘Ah, it has the sweet smell of childhood!’ Raja declared.

And Mother said to Father with a yawn—‘Come on, darling. It’s quite late. We had a hectic day. Goodnight, Raja. Put out the lights after you have admired that miserable cake.’

They were now gone, and Raja was left alone in the deserted hall.

Near the cake he found a note: ‘With love from Auntie and Bobby.’

‘Auntie, of course!’ Raja muttered, ‘But who is Bobby?’

There was the usual flow of early-morning traffic on a busy city road.

Batches of giggling girls, smartly dressed in summer styles, were on their way to schools and colleges—like so many flowers blooming in the concrete jungle.

They were being viewed from a window of his room by Raja, who was looking outside, for there was no one to talk to inside.

The whole house was empty.

The father had gone to work.

The mother had gone shopping.

Raja wandered aimlessly, restlessly through the empty house.

After the hectic, crowded life of the hostel, he felt this loneliness overbearing.

He picked up a paper to read and the girls stared at him from the advertisements—

Cigarette ads—‘Made For Each Other’.

Rubber foam mattresses—You relax in comfort—A curvaceous girl lying sprawled on the soft mattress.

Bed Of Roses—A girl invitingly tucked in between flowerpatterned bedsheets—Girls beckoning to him to use a certain aftershave lotion—Girls beckoning to him to come to Kashmir, now that summer is here—Girls inviting him to drive a certain car— Girls! Girls! Girls! In newspaper ads, in magazine illustrations, in cinema advertisements.

Girls! Girls! Girls!

The music of restlessness reached a crescendo, and he flung away the papers and magazines. Then the music stopped abruptly.

There was silence and emptiness in the house.

He got up, walked up to the kitchen.

There, at last, he got company. Two servants—a cook and a bearer—flirting with the saucy young maidservant of his mother! Raja was embarrassed.

‘You want something, Sir?’ asked the maidservant coquettishly.

‘I—oh—ah—yes, I want some tea!’

The tea trolley was brought by the bearer to the drawing room.

‘When do you return to school?’ asked the bearer, pouring out tea.

‘School over,’ Raja replied, briefly, ‘Now I will go to college here.’

‘That will be good, Sir.’

Raja cleared his throat and said, ‘Baboo!’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Do you know where Auntie lives?’

‘Whose Auntie, Sir? Yours or mine?’

‘The Universal Auntie. She was my governess when I was a child.’

‘You mean the old woman who brought the cake yesterday?’

‘Yes.’

‘She lives not far from my kholi. In Danda. Do you wish for her to be called?’

‘No. No. I just want her address.’

‘Everyone knows her in Danda village. Just ask for Mary Auntie. Danda village is near Khar. On the sea-front. If you want to go there, shall I get the car?’

‘No. No. I just wanted to know.’ And he dismissed the bearer. ‘Thank you for the tea. That will be all!’